نشریه تحقیقات مالی
پیاپی 3 (تابستان 1373)

The effect of a firm's dividend policy on the current price of its shares is a matter of considerable importance. not only to the corporate officials who must set the policy, but to investors planning portfolios and to economists seeking to understand and appraise the functioning of the capital markets. Do companies with generous distribution policies consistently sell at a premium over those with niggardly payouts? Is the reverse ever true If so. under what conditions? Is there an optimum payout ratio or range of ratios that maximizes the current worth of the shares'! Although these questions have he e n the subject of many empirical studies in recent years no consensus has yet he e n achieved. One reason appears to be the absence in the literature of a complete and reasonably rigorous statement of those parts of the economic theory of valuation hearing directly on the matter of dividend policy. Licking such a statement. investigators have not yet he e n able to frame their tests with sufficient precision to distinguish adequately between the various contending hypotheses. NOr have they been able tog1ve a convincing explanation of what their test results do imply about the underlying process of valuation. In t he hope that it may help to overcome these obstacles to effective empirical testing. this paper will attempt to fill the existing gap in the theoretical literature on valuation. We shall begin, in Section I, by examining the effects of differences in dividend policy on the current price of shares in an ideal economy characterized by perfect capital markets, rational behavior, and perfect certainty. Still within this convenient analytical framework we shall go on in Sections II and III to consider certain closely related issues that appear to have been responsible for considerable misunderstanding of the role of dividend policy. In particular. Section II will focus on the longstanding debate about what investors "really" capitalize when they buy shares; and Section III on the much mooted relations between price the rate of growth of profits. and the rate of growth of dividends per share. Once these fundamentals have been established. we shall proceed in Section IV to drop the assumption of certainty and to see the extent to which the earlier conclusions about dividend policy must he modified, Finally. in Section V, we shall briefly examine the implications for the dividend policy problem of certain kinds of market imperfections.

This paper reviews and analyzes the literature on agency theory in terms of the nature of the problem and its implications for management. Finance theory posits that the goal of economic organizations is to maximize stockholders welth. Attaining this goal was nut an issue when owners were also managers. But since world war II corporate ownership world - wide has become increasingly diffused. By 1969 only 15% of the largest. U.S.non financial institution were owned by their managers. This chance raises the issue of the relationships between owners and managers. To what extent do managers act on their own behalf rather than the owners as prescribed by finance theory" Several studies indicate that managers substitute their own interest in place of the shareholders. This is possible because managers possess more information about the firm, control the election procedure to the Board of Directors, and the share holders are widely dispersed. This phenomenon is called an agency problem. According t o Jensen and Meckling an "agency problem" exists when managers own less than 100% of the firm. With less than 100 percent ownership, managers can shift part of the cost assimilated with decisions made in their own interest. Clearly these conditions are common in major corporations of the world where global markets re qui re raising large amounts of capital for the research, development, and production futilities required to remain competitive. First. the existence of an agency problem will be elaborated and then its impact on a number of managerial decisions: managerial compensation, takeovers mergers and acquisitions, capital structure and hudgtcting, financial reporting, and closely held corporations will be discussed.

In recent years, information has become a major consideration in making financial decisions. In this paper there methods of project evaluation under inflationary conditions are descried and Compared. The three methods are: I• Gross profit per unit approach 2• Current price each now 3• Fixed price (real) cach flow In section II of the paper different conditions under which all three approaches yield the same results are discussed.

A vast spectrum of resources are available for financing the development and further renovation of housing sector. In the last two decades the complexities and intervowening of financial methods have been developed in Europe, U.S., and Far East. Even some of these new instruments have been transacted in international financial markets, Linearization and deregulation has contributed to the development of housing sector. The sources of funds in housing sectors are classified in three groups: 1- equity capital 2- debt capital 3- government contributions This article explains the a love mentioned financing methods and specifically analyses the mortgage markets and the new instruments which are introduced in the mortgage markets of the U.S. and rest of the world.

We have opened a new section in this issue dedicated to the surveys of thesis in the MBA level. In the first part three thesis have been presented. 1- Analysis and study of state auditing in execution of Supervision and control over the financial system of the country: by: Morteza Ahmady 2- Stuck dividend and it's effects o n common stuck price in Tehran Stuck Exchange; by Ibrnhim-Abbasi. 3- The examination of the relationship between the risk and return of common stocks listed in Tehran Stuck Exchange; by Saloomeh Bakhshandeh

Since some of the institutions and instruments in iran are different from those in other countries it appears to he a difficult task to find equivalent terminology in Farsi fur financial terms applied in English and French. By the same t o k e n. direct translation of the Western financial jargons t o Farsi results in misunderstanding at best and confusion at worst. We have asked Hosseein abdoh & Parviz sedaghat to examine the translation problems and provide our readers with a glossary of financial terms in Farsi and their equivalents in English. The third part of their work appears in this edition. We will continue the efforts in our subsequent issues so that a complete glossary of the Farsi financial terminology will be prepared in a near future